Delta Air Lines just announced three new destinations Austin – Denver, Columbus, and Kansas City – as well as increased frequencies to San Francisco and Indianapolis.

• Denver: twice daily SkyWest Embraer E175 regional jet service starts November 9, 2025
  
• Columbus daily SkyWest Embraer E175 regional jet service starts June 7, 2026
  
• Kansas City twice daily SkyWest Embraer E175 regional jet service starts June 7, 2026

Delta Air Lines Embraer E-175

San Francisco mainline will go double daily starting April 13, 2026 and Indianapolis mainline will triple to three times daily starting June 7, 2026. They also previously announced Palm Springs and Cab San Lucas flights starting in the fall.

According to schedule data from aviation analytics company Cirium, Delta currently flies to 25 destinations from Austin. Along with their regional partners, they operate 22% of flights and offer 19% of seats out of the airport. (That doesn’t include transatlantic joint venture partner KLM, which serves Austin – Amsterdam three times weekly with a Boeing 787-10.)

That makes them squarely the number two carrier in the city, having surpassed American Airlines (which retrenched after building up to nearly 40 destinations during the pandemic). American is now 14% of flights and 12% of seats – now just a percent ahead of United in both categories.

And today’s adds gives them them 30 announced destinations from the city. Delta’s release, though, calls it ‘nearly’ 30 so I wonder if a couple current destinations are on the chopping block to make room for these new flights.

Delta is duking it out with Southwest Airlines to become the anchor tenant at the airport, gaining access to the new midfield concourse that’s being built. Southwest currently represents 39% of flights and 41% of seats out of Austin.

Delta Air Lines As Seen From The Austin Sky Club

Delta has had discussions with the airport over:

• Building a new 30,000 square foot Sky Club located mid-concourse.
  
• Offering boarding direct from the jetbridge ‘if geometry allows’
  
• Potentially even keeping their current 9,000 square foot club

Year-over-year, Delta has grown traffic 12% and “already carried more than one million passengers to and from Austin this year.” Delta is also adding a flight attendant base in Austin later this year, in addition to the SkyWest base that now services Delta regional flights.

Initially with their big expansion in Austin, it appeared purely opportunistic. American was pulling out. Gates were available, and there won’t be any more coming online until the 2030s. They flew cheap short hops to nearby Texas cities, which looked like a play for flying migrants up from the border.

The flights appeared full flying to Austin, empty in reverse, and they were selling cheap. Harlingen service didn’t last.

But they needed time to organize their plans, which have been in the works for some time (interrupted by the pandemic). I believe I was first to report seven years ago that Delta intended to make Austin a focus city, based on advertised sales jobs in the city.

American interrupted those plans when they swooped in, grabbed gates, and started running regional jet flights that ran into problems with their pilot scope contract and that were often poorly-timed and lost money.

Delta seems to be announcing service and then growing what works, beginning with regional jets even on routes with existing competition (like mainline jets from Southwest, United and Frontier to Denver), and making a play to be the city’s dominant carrier of the future – even besting Southwest, as Delta President Glen Hauenstein says that carrier’s most loyal flyers are now leaving them as it blows up its brand. These adds give them them 30 announced destinations from the city.